This sounds much better than getting lost in The Dubai Mall parking lot…

As if you needed another excuse to visit The Dubai Mall, you’ll soon be able to travel there in total VIP style – zooming along the Boulevard in an autonomous vehicle.

Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has announced its plans to introduce a driverless shuttle service in Downtown, that will transport passengers between The Dubai Mall and an underground parking garage on Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Boulevard.

The vehicles will be able to hold six or seven passengers, and will run along a 550-metre dedicated corridor.

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Have you seen the driverless cars scooting around Downtown?

“As a city, we are leading in the use of artificial intelligence in the transport sector,” said Hussain Al Banna, the RTA’s executive director of traffic.

“We already have a driverless metro operating for so many years. We also have a smart traffic light system Scoot, which will be interacting with autonomous vehicles on a trial that we will be conducting on Mohammed Bin Rashid Boulevard,” he added.

While we don’t yet know exactly when we’ll be able to take a ride in these futuristic shuttles, Al Banna said the pilot project would run in 2018.

And we can expect plenty more autonomous additions to the city – HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, has said he wants 25 per cent of all journeys in Dubai to be driverless by 2030.

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